Through Twitter and his blog it was clear to see GeoHot had a large following with his blog posts getting comments in the thousands. But it looks as though the attention has become too much as George is now withdrawing from public view on the web.

The reason for the withdrawal is apparently down to harassment from others online wanting to know when his next jailbreak was coming, what his plans were, and probably a fair bit or negative commentary too. One of his final tweets is telling, it says:

I was just having fun but some people had to take this all way too seriously. It’s a phone, and it isn’t much fun anymore.

We may not see GeoHot online for a while, but I doubt very much he is leaving behind hacking devices, cracking protection, and generally getting gadgets to do what their vendors never wanted them to.

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have people ask you every day how to jailbreak, when the next jailbreak is coming, or can you do this or that. Stopping all that should give this young guy some breathing space to collect his thought and decide what he really wants to do with his life.

On the other hand, GeoHot may just be continuing with his work, but wants to be cut off from everyone. New jailbreaks may appear from him, but we’ll never know if its him or someone else making them available if he is intent on working under the radar.

Speak Your Mind

Robert

Actually, most of the venom directed toward George recently has to do with one of his most recent public blog posts in which he claims to have jailbroken his iPhone 4. After that the post devolves into what is essentially a ‘Nyah, nyah! Look what I have and you don’t!’

With that slap in the face and the residual sting of the PS3 custom firmware hoax, it’s no surprise that people are starting to hate him.

http://3dslice.net jigglywiggly

That’s what happens when you make something for iphone noob fags.
Move to xbox 360 jtag debuging would ya? We would always love someone to jtag the new 360s after the efuses have been blown. And also maybe develop a kernel for the 360 Linux that supports the powerpc at its fullest?

Well who am I to say, do w/e you want. You’ve done a lot, but for the wrong crowd. It’s rare to see low level programmers these days.

Fuzzball

I hope he’s devoting some time to fix the debacle that is the PS3. I could care less about jail-breaking an iPhone. The iPhone is marketed and sold as a closed system. OTOH the “fat” PS3 was marketed and sold with having the Other OS feature; that advertised feature was taken away by his actions. I would be less mad, still a bit mad, if there was something to show for it. Instead, there is nothing useful for the for the community by his little stunt.

I hope this ends in Sony paying the prosecution lawyers their money and an update that restores the Other OS feature. If it ends up being all monetary, we’re still screwed and I’d be surprised if any “fat” owners get more than $20. Class action suits usually end up with the lawyers getting some bank and the screwed consumers getting nothing.

I’m mad at Hotz and Sony. I want the feature that was taken away back.

wdfowty

@jigglywiggly: It’s that kind of blatant ignorance that made the dude step into the shadows. Do you have ANY idea how hard any of this reverse-engineering and cracking really is? How difficult it would be to write an ENTIRE kernel for a closed source beast like the Xbox? I don’t think you do. If it was really that easy, you and I would be doing it.

I had a feeling that the PS3 cfw was a hoax, even Geo isn’t that clever. Though i do think the memory glitch exploit could have led to something.

He’s working on the iDroid project afaik, as he is credited in the 1.0 MoJo release.

wdfowty

I get what he was doing here, but the haters basically won. How hard is it to turn off comments, set up an internet filter, and restrict a twitter page?

This kid has done so much and made so much money and he isn’t even as old as me. He UNLOCKED the iPhone before he was an adult! He got gov’t grants for research…But I guess everyone has their limits…